6 Things Keeping Hoteliers Awake at Night

We have been talking with hotel general managers (GMs) and owners, coast to coast, and here are a few things they’re focused on as they start their third year of operations with the COVID pandemic still affecting the travel industry:

1) Addressing The Ongoing Labor Shortage

Although 151,000 new leisure and hospitality jobs were added per the January 2022  U.S. Jobs Report, employment is still down by 1.8 million jobs from where it was in February, 2020. Many hotels still face ongoing labor shortages. Some hotel companies have resorted to offering hiring bonuses and improved benefits to attract and keep their service employees, but finding good people and hanging onto them, remains a critical challenge.  

2) Controlling Costs That Are Spiraling Upward

Operating costs continue to increase due in part to a decrease in occupancies. Food prices are rising, while food shortages are making news. The escalating demand for front desk, service staff, and housekeeping has caused an upward shift in their hourly wages. In fact, the national average for hospitality employees is $20/hr. (per Salary.com).

3) Making the Hotel Experience as Safe and Contact-Free as Possible

Maintaining customer confidence remains a constant worry for hotel operations. Both business and pleasure travel have begun to come back; however, guests still want to minimize their potential exposure to infection as much as possible. “Contact-free” is the new normal.

At the same time, people are more comfortable than ever ordering food deliveries from local restaurants and grocery stores and receiving them contact-free at home. Hotel guests want reassurances that hotels are taking similar preventive measures when they have items delivered to their hotel room.

4) Keeping Employees Happy and Safe

Employee retention and ensuring they have the support and resources they need to do their jobs are other ongoing concerns. While short-handed employees are being pushed to work harder and faster, they often talk of the stress they feel from the moment they clock-in each day.

Due to constant contact with guests who come from all over, they also worry about contracting the COVID virus. These concerns affect their ability to fulfill their daily responsibilities. 

5) Scoring High Marks on Guests’ Reviews

Surveys show us that hotel guests reward speed, efficiency, and good will from the employees who serve them. Guests can be on their smartphones in seconds to post great reviews on booking sites and social media, but can just as quickly write about a bad experience.

6) Getting Back to Business

Just about all the hotels we spoke to can’t wait to get back to filling their hotels at all times, whether it’s from citywide conventions, groups and meetings, or “bleisure” (business or leisure) travelers. They are also giving GenZ travelers, who place a high value on unique experiences while traveling <https://www.travelpulse.com/news/entertainment/gen-z-drives-tiktok-travel-trends-viral.html>, a closer look as a source of new guests.  

One Solution for Getting a Good Night’s Rest

Many hotel GMs are turning to technology for answers. Staff shortages, fears of contracting the virus, employee anxieties, and guest expectations can all be mitigated to some degree through technology. Mobile and kiosk check-in, text alerts about room status, and streamlining online food ordering are examples of technologies that are widely used every day. Adding to these automation tools are robots making routine room service deliveries –– and helping to free up employees to focus on fulfilling guest requests and improving operational efficiencies.

Savioke® Relay+® Service Robots can deliver food, beverages, housekeeping, and convenience items without exposing guests or staff to COVID. In addition, because people love interacting with these robots, they drive higher demand for food and beverage orders with some hotels seeing their room service deliveries and revenues double, even triple.

While their service robots are providing faster times for the lower value deliveries, GMs can then redirect their people to offer more of a white-glove guest experience and engage with them at a deeper level.

On social media platforms, Relay+ Service Robots are having a positive impact as well. Guest postings are generating millions of views and “Likes” for hotels throughout the country. For example, at Dream Hollywood Hotel in Southern California, General Manager Vaughn Davis said, “We’re delighted to cultivate a social media sensation like Alfred (their Savioke robot). One guest was responsible for over 250,000 impressions on TikTok, which happened organically because our service robot is so cool.”  

From the Radisson Sunnyvale hotel in Silicon Valley, a recent local ABC TV news report on a Relay Service Robot ran on over 50 news outlets globally, and then was featured in the opening monolog on “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert! Clearly, service robots have already become a welcome addition to the hospitality industry.

Conclusion

Hotel GMs are hopeful that better days will return soon –– and technology innovations like Savioke Relay+ Service Robots will help them get there so they can start sleeping through the night again.

About Relay Service Robots

Initially developed and patented in 2014, Savioke has deployed hundreds of Relay service robots worldwide who have completed more than 1,000,000 deliveries.

To learn more, contact us. We can answer your questions and give you a quick demo.

‘Robots don’t sneeze.’ Hotels, hospitals, offices turning to delivery bots during coronavirus pandemic

Manager Jeremy Kueffner shows Astro, a room service drone, at the library of the Hotel Axiom seen on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2020, in San Francisco, Calif. More hotels are using these robots during the pandemic to aid the 'touchless' environment hotels.

By Gregory Thomas, San Francisco Chronicle Travel Newsletter

The next time you order hotel room service, you may receive a buzz on your phone rather than a knock on your door.

As the hospitality industry struggles to adapt to changing consumer behavior during the coronavirus pandemic, many hotels are turning to room service robots to help wary travelers feel more at ease.

“Guests now think of it as a perk to not have a person come to their room,” said David Wang, director of sales and marketing at the Crowne Plaza San Jose - Silicon Valley hotel, in Milpitas. “So the less human interaction we have, the better.”

Such service bots have been around for years, helping hotels slim down on room service delivery time. But with the pandemic twisting norms across the spectrum of human interaction, more businesses have expressed interest in leasing them. In the last six months, inquiries have quadrupled at Savioke®, the San Jose company that manufactures the bots, according to Bill Booth, the company’s head of sales and marketing.

“The robots don’t sneeze, as we say,” Booth said.

Savioke leases out about 100 bots to more than 80 hotels, several of which are in the Bay Area, and has clocked upwards of 700,000 deliveries across its fleet since it launched 7 years ago. Hotels in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and elsewhere have recently put in robot orders, Booth says. Hospitals, high-rise office and apartment building managers have also been calling.

The company is the brainchild of Steve Cousins, former CEO of the Willow Garage robotics incubator in Menlo Park, which closed in 2014. Savioke starting shipping bots to hotels the same year.

“We had a sense that the service industry broadly was not well served by robotics and automation,” said Cousins, founder and CEO of Savioke. “One thing that’s cool about putting robots in hotels is lots of people see them.”

The 304-room Crowne Plaza ordered its first room service bot, which it calls Dash, in 2015. Standing about 3 feet tall and outfitted with a bow-tie sticker, the bot comes with a touchscreen face and locking compartment at its head, and scoots around like an autonomous vacuum. It is integrated into the hotel’s elevator system, greets guests with beeps and boops, and knows to steer clear of open stairwells.

View of the carrier of Astro, a room service drone used at the Hotel Axion on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2020, in San Francisco, Calif.Photo: Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

Almost immediately, Dash cut the average room delivery time in the 12-floor hotel from 10 minutes to three for amenities ranging from coffee to towels to chicken sandwiches. “That’s a deep time-saver,” Wang said. Plus, it served as an amusing novelty for guests to gawk at and mention in Trip Advisor reviews.

Now, though, Dash and its brethren fit neatly into the “touchless” experience that businesses dependent on high volumes of people are trying to cultivate — alongside plexiglass partitions and plastic-wrapped disposable toothbrushes.

In health care facilities, the bots have been used to shuttle blood samples to and from hospital labs and prescription medications around commercial pharmacies, Booth says.

With meal delivery gaining ground, offices are looking into bots as go-betweens for workers leery of cafeteria lines and front-door handoffs. Savioke is working on a pilot program at a local office complex, Booth says.

“We’re in somewhat of an unprecedented time,” said Steve Cousins, founder and CEO of Savioke. “We’re hearing from people who run services in office buildings who have to rethink what the world will be like as COVID comes to an end. Now’s a good time to try new things for 2021 and beyond.”

Hotel managers interviewed for this article said the robots aren’t replacing human workers. Bots like Dash are often most active during the graveyard shift when staffs are thin, and during peak check-in times when desk agents are too busy to quickly deliver a bar of soap to the 10th floor.

“The focus is not to replace people but to use the technology as an advantage in providing efficiency,” said Brian Bolf, senior vice president of revenue management at Sightline Hospitality, which operates Hotel Axiom in San Francisco and leases a Savioke bot there. “In the realm of COVID, it brings another layer of necessity to guests that don’t want the contact.”

Another added benefit of the bot, Wang says, is that they eliminate the awkward moment guests often face when opening their door to a staffer bringing them a tube of toothpaste: Should I tip? Or just close the door?

“The robot doesn’t get tips,” Wang said.

Even so, some of Savioke’s bots have developed personas. A bot at the Hotel Trio in Healdsburg is named Rosé, a cute nod to the wine type. Another at a hotel in Germany has its own Instagram account, featuring photos of the bot in various holiday costumes.

Based on reports from hotels, Savioke is looking to expand its bots’ functionalities. Can the bots carry more cargo? Make multiple stops? Patrol like hallway monitors?

“That’s the type of feedback we’re getting now,” Booth says. “What else can the robot do?”

Gregory Thomas is the Chronicle's editor of lifestyle & outdoors. Email: gthomas@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @GregRThomas